howeird | Entries tagged with #9

Up at 3, pit stop, then up with the alarm at 8 - came as a surprise. Took 15 minutes to get going.

Wore one of the new Aloha shirts, which says it is 100% cotton, but this is not the coarse material which my other cotton aloha shirts are made of. It feels almost like silk. I am impressed. 2XL fits well, the only thing con is the pocket is higher than I like.

The Samsung S9 is a little wacky, it is so fast that it opens apps before I even know I touched them. It is so much faster than the Pixel 2. A lot smaller, which I like for carrying but not for using. The camera app keeps switching itself to selfie mode.

Google Assistant doesn't know how to talk to my SmartThings from the phone but it works great on the two home devices. Will have to research that.

Made an omelet for breakfast - eggbeaters, Swiss and American cheese, wanted to add mushrooms but they were spoiled. Added chopped walnuts instead.

I streamed my drive to and from the Toastmasters meeting. Got there 15 minutes early and they had just started setting up. The hall is nice & large and well lit. They arranged chairs in a split horseshoe, four deep. No tables, which is odd because they expected everyone to fill in detailed grading sheets for each of the speakers. There were two events (special meeting) which members from other groups came to compete in. Table Topic, in which the speaker is given the topic right before they speak. They keep the competitors outside until it is their turn to speak, so no help from the previous speakers. Next was humorous speeches.

Every speaker used the whole floor between the lectern and the audience, which did not work for me. It's a speech, not a stage play - use the podium.

None of the speakers knew how to project, and all but one had serious accents. Three could not pronounce a W. Only one had good articulation but had I been in the back row it would not have helped.

I need to look into hearing aids. It's obvious that I'm not understanding nearly as much as the rest of the audience did.

Next stop, Lowe's. The 0.75 ³ foot bags of Miracle Grow were on sale for $2.50 each, the 2³ foot bags were $9 each. Did the math, two big bags = 5.333333 small bags. Two big bags = $18, 5 small bags = $12.50. Brainer. If I didn't need a calculator it woud have been a no-brainer. Bought 5 because I didn't think I needed 4 cubic feet.

At Lowe's I was having a low Hgl event, bought a can of starbucks energy drink and drank it in the store. Chomped a few glucose tablets as well.

Home, dug up the bird of paradise, which had more roots into the clay than I expected, but they came out whole. Dug up the yarrow, and two plants with separate root balls came out. I have no idea what the second plant is. Poured 4 bags of soil over the strip where the plants had been, and replanted them all a couple of feet apart. Poured the 5th bag over the front of the garden where some pretty flowering ground cover wants to crawl to but didn't have good soil.

Watered all the porch plants, the roses and the new soil.

After gardening I drove to Grocery Outlet for strawberries, grapes bananas and things one should not shop for when hungry. Which I was. Very.

As a result, consumed a small baklava piece and a dark chocolate covered tangerine slice. And dinner was bacon and baked beans, with mochi for dessert.

Watched enough of the 49ers on Tivo to know it wasn't going to be worth watching the rest.

Delivered was a small package with car primer spray paint, which I brought to #9 where it was addressed to.

Delivered much later was a pair of cookie sheets. The pair I have been using were not non-stick after all. They fit into the kitchen garbage.

Verizon sent a text that I was down to 500Mb of data. Yesterday they said I had 3GB. Since I plan on doing a lot of streaming the rest of the month I changed my plan to unlimited data for less than twice the price. I can change back any time.

Watched enough of the KC game to be disgusted with the booth guys having orgasms about the QB's magnificent playing. Even when it wasn't. It's TV, not radio. You can shut up between plays.

Watched 2 episodes of Nova, parts 1 and 2 about active volcanoes in Africa. There apparently are a lot of them, but few have been studied because all those countries are run by militia and similarly scary armed people.

The cats are not enjoying their diet. Spot especially. Spook knows how to ask for treats. Spot knows how to intimidate Spook.

Plans for tomorrow:
Work
Nails
Home

Slept so in this morning that I had to keep checking to see if it was Sunday. Noon hgl reading was high, until I realized that by noon all my insulins had worn off. Considering that, it was okay.

Did not have a proper lunch till I got back from Lowe's, around 2:30. I got everything on my list, plus a couple of sweet basil plants, a seedless lime tree which had baby limes growing on it, and a yellow rose bush. And 4 miracle grow garden soil bags (they only had the small ones, but my rationalization is they are easier to wrangle than the big ones).

Home, plugged the car back in 'cause I was going to go out again. Put the miracle grow and the rose bush in the wheel barrow I'd lugged from behind the shed, and parked them at the end of the drive against the house.

Pulled the not quite dead dwarf orange bush out of its way too heavy clay pot, did not realize orange bushes had long sharp thorns, and as a result decorated the porch with a lot of dirt. It was hot and I was hungry so left the mess & went inside. Lunch was a salami sandwich, cole slaw on the side. Two soil-filled small pots were brought in from the porch where they had failed to grow rose cuttings, and the two basil plants were planted into one of them, the other's soil was dumped on an uncultivated part of the carport garden. I was going to toss the two sweet basil plants already on the kitchen table, but maybe tomorrow.

Unplugged the car and headed for a new massage place. As I was backing out, a shit-4-brains Fedex driver decided that would be a good time to come up the driveway with a package. I almost hit him - I was looking the other way backing out, trying not to hit the wheel barrow. Had him leave the box on the steps.

The massage place is near a Togo's I had lunch at a lot when I was at Moto. There used to be a good massage place across the street, but it was sold and the new owners gentrified it. Made it a couples-friendly place.

Had a good massage, Chinese woman spoke good English. There was a horse figurine on the shelf, I asked her if the Chinese word for horse was "ma", which is what it is in Thai. She said yes, but it's a rising tone. In Thai. "ma" means horse, mother, dog, come in, and one other thing, depending on the tone. Looked it up, ghost/giant is the 5th one.

Home, was going to get a #9 at Togo's but there had been a spill, and it was cordoned off for mopping. But I did stop off at the Arab/Mexican/India market, and bought two jars of pistachio halvah from Lebanon. They don't carry the marbled chocolate ones, and the other brands were from Turkey, which means expensive and inferior. Also bought some ginger and a can of mini stuffed grape leaves. The line was slow, and long.

It was starting to get chilly and windy. Took the dustpan and brush and put all the dirt back into the clay pot. Pulled all three dying pawpaw saplings from their big pots, and a dying star jasmine from the front garden. Knocked the dirt off them on the compost heap and put them in the garden recycle bin. Dumped the soil from two of the pawpaw pots and the clay pot into the front garden, washed them out and set the pawpaw pots on the porch to dry and the clay pot and its clay water catcher next to a similar one on the edge of the front garden.

The third pawpaw pot I trowelled out the middle and transplanted the lime tree into it. That's now sitting where the orange bush was. The trowelled soil was added to the tops of the Thai lime trees and the bay laurel.

Work still to be done:
Dump the miracle grow in the front garden to build it up enough to plant the yellow rose, and also transplant two rose bushes which the juniper tree is killing in the corner garden, and put them in the front garden. I may also break out some rose fertilizer and dose the rose garden.

Watched the UW-Fresno game, and while I liked the big score the huskies piled up in the first half, after the first play of the 3rd quarter they didn't score again, and let Fresno score a couple of times. This means that like last year, the UW will be toast if it loses enough first stringers.

And again, the idiots in the booth spent more time talking about trivia than calling the game. And the idiot director kept cutting in medleys of previous plays so much that at times I had no idea which was the actual game and what was replay.

Dinner was falafel, mini stuffed grape leaves, artichoke hearts and spanikopita. Pistachio halvah for dessert.

Plans for tomorrow:
Gardening
Maybe hang out downtown

Tuesday...

Up early, finished packing. Actually had to re-pack because the way the hotel laundry had folded my things made them too tall to close the suitcase.

I left behind a few presents. The transformer was a waste of suitcase space — all my chargers are dual voltage, there were plenty of outlets in the room so all I used were my adapter plugs. Also left behind the antiseptic spray and the cuticle oil. And the fanny pack with the twin water bottle holders which I never used. And I threw away the uneaten 4/5th of a "dark" 47% chocolate bar I'd bought on the cruise ship, local milk chocolate is excellent but they suck at dark.

Breakfast was light — I was not hungry at all.

Back at the room and wasted as much time as I could stand on FB, where so many friends don't understand that no amount of crying or protesting ever stops prejudice. As the line from Lake Wobegone says, everyone wants to believe "all our women are strong, all our men are good-looking, and all our children are above average." We all believe we are superior. Those who don't believe that are the ones who throw themselves in front of a train, slit their wrists, etc.

Checked out of the hotel way too early, around 10, and of course BofA denied the charge on the no-exchange-fee card though they had promised they wouldn't, so I had to use my Chase card, which cost me an extra 3%.

( Read more... )

It finally cleared up enough around noon to go out exploring. Breakfast was light, just eggs & a tiny bit of liver pate and a tiny piece of grilled mackerel, OJ and sparkling water. Dessert was watermelon and then a couple of gluten-free chocolate chip cookies which were way more delicious than gluten free ought to be.

Took the elevator downstairs and bought more postcard stamps, this time 3 designs in a packet of 15. R-kioski had lots of them. Then walked to the train station and took photos all around the area, including one stone building I think is now a theater. And the SkyDinner was in operation. I just can't.

Took a new to me tram ISO the esplanade, but missed my stop, and ended up walking in a neighborhood without trams, but with lots of parks and maple trees. Got on a #3 tram a few blocks away, and decided to change to the #9 at the railway station to get to the con for the after party/BASFA meeting, but as I got on a group of refugee women barged in ahead and behind me, then left the tram as it pulled out. They had my wallet. :-(

So all my credit cards and such are gone, but I still have my passport and cell phone with all the card numbers. I phoned the travel insurance but they were not helpful, except to suggest that I have someone back home wire me money with western union. Called Bank of America, and spent an hour between the credit and debit fraud departments, who wouldn't do anything to help which I couldn't do myself. There are no BofA affiliates in Finland. I hung up on them when the con security people kicked us out of the building.

No mood to go to the party, took the tram home.

The front desk gave me a new room key when I showed my passport. Went online and used the Visa card I'd left home to book my airport shuttle. Used the same card to get the Helsinki transit mobile ticket app. Checked online with Barclay, no charges on that card. Tried to use it to send money to myself with western union, but WU wouldn't take it. Called support, they said it needed to be a Finnish card, or someone else's logging in from the US. Called little sister & her husband, they got it done, but then WU said no, they needed to use their own card, so now there's 200 Euros for me to pick up, the WU place is down in the metro tunnel across the plaza from the back of the hotel.

It rained a little on and off today.

Plans for tomorrow:
Breakfast
WU
It may depend on the weather. But taking a ferry ride to Estonia was the original plan. After I upload this maybe I'll book online...

Up way early, forced myself to stay in bed till 7:30. Low-ish Hgl. Have I mentioned how much I hate the whole bathroom is the shower thing? There is a tiny shower section with a hinged door that can enclose it, but taking a shower in that space would only be possible for small children and snakes. I have learned to stand with my back to the opened clamshell, so it catches the water instead of it going all over the sink counter and my meds.

The morning was for finding the tall ships, so after another "I ate too much" breakfast I took the #2 to the stop which Google suggested, which was one past the one I wanted. It landed me near one of the cruise ship docks. Helsinki has about 6 of those.

Walked back towards the other side of the harbor, took some photos of the naked lady and sea lions fountain, and suddenly breakfast for the last 3 days informed me in no uncertain terms it was done being digested and needed to complete its journey now!

Across the street was a sign "WC 100 m" pointing into the park. I didn't see one, but there was a restaurant closer than that and they let me use theirs. I thought I'd made it in time but turned out to be not quite. So, back to the hotel to shower & change & take 2 more Immodium.

Then back on #2 and continue where I left off. Took lots of photos, rode the Skywheel. The ride is right on the shore, facing out to sea, and the view in the other direction is of a short piece of the peninsula, so it's not much of a view. It is a nice new piece of equipment, and the ride was long with stops at the quarter marks. I think it was 3 times around. Could have been 4. 12€ was a reasonable price.

Toured the farmer's market, bought 20 post cards and stamps. The produce looked great, especially the berries, but my tummy said no.

Found the tall ships after crossing two bridges with love locks. There were about 6 ships in all, two were hosting tour groups, one was docked for a private party. There is also a row of derelict ships, a history lesson of sorts.

I spent a lot of time just sitting in the sun and watching people go by. So many pretty women in sexy attire. Long legs are the norm here. So is bra-less for those of average or less endowments.

Eventually went back to the hotel, grabbed my badge ribbons stash, and took #9 to the con. But first, a trip downstairs to the Finland shop for a pen, and R-Kioski for chocolate bars.

At the con, headed for the fan lounge, chatted with some friends along the way, then sat down and cranked out 20 cards, labeled and stamped. The stamps are individual peel and stick, and they peel from the wrong side. ;-)

As I was leaving, a fan pointed up and out the transom - raging thunderstorm! So I went to the front doors and took videos from the outbound "airlock". One brave soul ran outside to the entry (about 10 feet from the exit) where there was an awning. I followed. The waterproofing on my Giants jacket worked.

It was 5 minutes to 6, all the dinner places close at 6. Stupidity. The hotel restaurant and the open cafe were crowded. I wasn't hungry anyhow. The plan was to park outside the Masq entry and people watch/costume watch, but the crowd was mostly inside. Huge venue, people staying away because of the crowds left one whole section empty. I got a seat in the front row, which should have been but was not reserved for wheelchair access.

The masq was a major FAIL in everything except the costumes. The vast majority of costumes were local, novice or open categories. I don't remember any journeyman or master entries, but after #20 I stopped paying attention. There were only one or two iffy costumes, most were very well done, and several novices would have held their own in a master class competition.

BUT

The lighting sucked. Very low lumens, red filtered. Horrible for non-flash photography and did not show off the colors well. The 2nd contestant didn't come out for about 5 minutes. The MC had no headset, so did not know WTF was happening, and kept ad libbing, calling for #3 or whomever, causing more confusion. Finally a backstage person yelled that #2 was waiting for the music to start. Audio was bass-loaded and generally too loud. MC had a horrible time with the Scandinavian names (contestants and characters) and really should have been a local costumer.

After all the costumes were shown, it was time to hit the fan photo room which I'd seen on the way in. I parked myself by the door in the front row, and waited. Contestants dribbled in, and John from the panel decided it was his personal photo shoot until some guy with a cheap camera strapped to his chest started organizing things. I'm pretty sure he was official.

Suddenly all the photographers, tablet and cell phone owners converged on the front of the room, blocking me out. And the C came in with her strident voice and took charge, which completely ruined it for me, so I bailed. The room was a FAIL. No backdrop, no lights, no space and a total free for all. Chest camera guy did one good thing, he overrode C's penchant to have everyone pose in numerical order, and got the people in the hot costumes done first.

Back to the hotel, different trams were running by now. Eerie to have what looks like dusk at 10 pm. #9 finally showed up, back to the plaza behind the hotel. Memphis again for dinner. Ribs were excellent. Banana chocolate cake not so much. Pineapple mohito made me drowsy. Very slow service this time. DJ was showing a lot of skill with his nice sequencer, but all he did was keep a backbeat and throw in short sound bites. No actual music. It would have been great for dancing, but nobody was.

Hotel, checked email and FB.and went to bed.

Plans for tomorrow depend on the weather, but include a lighter breakfast,writing this, and updating Quicken.
Need 12 more postcards & stamps

Slept like a rock last night. Just one pit stop. Good Hgl numbers. Up with the alarm at 7, dropped off laundry on the way to breakfast at about 8:30. This time I found the real scrambled eggs - saw that what I'd taken yesterday was "egg butter". Their mini croissants are the same kind they have at Google, nice & crunchy on the outside, soft on the inside.

#9 tram to the con, got there a little after 10. Once again, all the events were full. The con facebook page claims that since there are more events happening at the same time, there is plenty of space for everyone, but they ignore the fact that more members are arriving each day. The masquerade room holds 4,000. There are more than 8,000 members. It is not going to be pretty.

I don't do crowds or camping out in line. The Finns love to.

There is some good news here. One is that the Worldcon SMOFs were afraid Finland did not have the fan base to support a world con. But 35% of attendees are local, which is shockingly good. Also, there are many more children than usual, so so much for the "graying of fandom". A particular perk for me is as a country overrun by Vikings, there a lots of natural born redheads. Lots. Like maybe 25%. And probably fewer than average redheads-by-choice. Platinum is the "by choice" color here. I saw more natural platinum blondes in Astoria, Oregon's Finnish community than I'm seeing here.

I checked out the digital art show, it was running, people were watching. Both of them. As I passed the art bidding table, I saw "howeird" printed large on a page - obviously meant to be a label for a panel of physical art work. I asked about it, the they said they printed out all the artist names, and that stack were the ones not exhibiting hang-able works. I asked for and received an Artist ribbon.

I spent a lot of time in the Green Room processing images from the last few days and uploading them to Flickr. First the ghost walk, since I'd promised the arranger, whom I know from BASFA.
https://www.flickr.com/photos/how3ird/albums/72157684796026844

Bird-in-hand is worth..um...nevermind.

The house that the Moomins live in, across the street from the author's apartment, the late Tove Jansson.

Next was the part of the nuclear reactor trip which was on the grounds of the site.
https://www.flickr.com/photos/how3ird/albums/72157684720936371

OCD test

Long long walk into the bedrock tunnel.

And then the photos from the bus ride there and back, which the GPS info on Flickr says is about halfway across the country
https://www.flickr.com/photos/how3ird/albums/72157683966007102

Went for lunch at a Hessburger stand. Cheeseburger was about the same meat as McD's, but the cheese wasn't melted. And no condiments except ketchup. Fries were okay until they got cold.

Back to the Green Room after again not getting into a panel talk. About an hour before our panelists were going to meet there. I asked two people at a table for 4 if I could commandeer some space for my laptop, and one of the people was on my panel. That worked well. At 10 minutes till meeting time, I went to the WC, when I returned the moderator had her name card set up at a table in front, we moved her to join us. Eventually two more arrived, and we had a great chat about what we might talk about. Then we headed for the panel room, took our seats, and with about 3 seconds to spare another member joined us. It was that Hugo nominated author whose book I kicked to the curb as being too pretentious. She was a bit like that in person, but it was a panel with daunting talent, so we all contributed evenly, except for the one Finnish playwright, who had some great ideas in the Green Room but took a while to chime in on the panel.

It was a hoot, a very fast 45 minutes. The audience was very good, not quite a full house, but we were given one of the huge double rooms. We only had about 4 people bail before the end, all but one looked to be beating the mad rush.

After the panel I was button-holed by a woman who does shows at Seattle's 5th Ave theater. Which made me not get in to a panel a bunch of my friends were on, crammed into a room which holds 20.

Grabbed a croissant and a piece of cheesecake at the Helsinki Café downstairs.

Back to the main hall to consider my options. A woman who had been near the front of the musicals panel chatted me up, she is working on Baltimore's 2018 con, and suggested if I showed up, she would like to get me on the program. Something to think about.

The line for the rock band was all the way around the hallways clear back to the entrance lobby, 45 minutes before time. I people-watched for a while. The filk concert was 2 hours away, the parties an hour after that (and they have been panned on FB). So I went back to the hotel, dropped off my laptop,grabbed my jacket, hat and tablet and took the elevator to the bottom floor, and was surprised that I'd guessed right, it let out onto the plaza.

Lots of pubs open, didn't want to eat at the same place twice, so ended up around the back of the plaza at a place called Restaurant Empire Plaza, which has a Chinese ambiance. Ordered the seafood casserole, and it was awful. Unchewable mussels, only three small shrimp, imitation crab sticks, lots of veggies, bean noodles in one big lump, all in a sauce somewhere between sweet & sour and beef stock. The sign on the door said they were open till 11, but they closed at 10. So no dessert.

Back to the hotel, slowly because that plaza is a constant flow of eye candy. Stopped in at the RKioski and bought some local candy bars and had one for desert. Will have another any minute now. The doors I'd come in through had closed half an hour before. Had to hike around and uphill, not fun on a full stomach.

Looked up Thai massage places, may try for one on Saturday.

Oh, and a news flash on the con FB page - the railway drivers are going on strike Monday afternoon for a day, which means I'll have to get to my flight Tuesday by bus. No big deal, the Finnair shuttle leaves from the station 3 blocks down the hill. But my Monday plans to take the ferry to Estonia will need to be re-researched. There actually are as many buses (maybe more) than trams.

Plans for tomorrow:
Breakfast
Con
Photo workshop at 2pm aka 1400
Whatever

But first, the morning was good, Hgl was 118, I woke up only a little before the alarm, and this time found the hotel's free breakfast buffet, which is HUGE. My only regret was mistaking egg salad for scrambled eggs.** Juice was a techie adventure. There is what appears to be a plain water spout, with no physical on/off dial. To its left is a tablet displaying images of 4 flutes with colors and labels. Touch the orange flute and orange juice comes out of the spout. Watched some geek-FAIL as an image was pushed but no glass had been placed beneath the spout.

**I take that back. I should have left the bacon on the greasy serving tray. It came back to get me later.

Getting to the con is a straight shot on the #9 tram across the street from the hotel, but there is no ticket machine there,so I walked a block downhill to a ticket machine and 3 blocks back up. #9 schedule says every 11 minutes, but it is more like every 6, and sometimes several arrive in a row. After about 10 stops, the driver announced something in Finnish and Swedish, and people get off the tram and hang round outside. Then a passenger translates into English - something wrong with the tram or its schedule, get off and take the next one. And the next one was right there, empty, waiting for ours to get out of its way.

The rest of the trip was uneventful.

The people stationed at the front entry to registration had no idea there was a special line for participants, but there were only 3 people ahead of me and 6 registration volunteers, so the regular line was fine. But the volunteer had no idea where I should get my participant gear, so I stood in line at the participants registration which was the next line to the left, for 15 minutes. One volunteer, 8 people ahead of me. Only to be told to go to that table on the other side of the entrance hall, where they found my "howeird" name sign and panel schedule filed a couple of clicks after Kevin Standlee's. They explained that no matter the badge name, the paperwork was printed in legal surname order.

So I got a ribbon, a name card and a list of my two panels.

Did a lot of walking, finding the location of the of the Green Room was a challenge, Thursday's panel location was easy, the signs pointed right to it via stairs, the elevator was hidden down the hall and around a corner. Friday's workshop locale I did not find, following the signs got me downstairs to food row, so I bought a soda and sat down and checked my email. Message from the moderator of Friday's panel to call her on WhatsApp, which I did, and she invited me to the coffee shop upstairs where I met her brother and her husband. She is delightful, and we chatted for about half an hour. I don't think she saw that when I got up I was very unstable - major hit of low BP, which happens as a side effect of diabetes. It passed in a few seconds, but not as few as normal.

Tried to attend the first panel on my hit list, but 15 minutes before start time the room was full (sign on the door, reinforced by security person at the door). Next panel was in the now-empty room next door in an hour, I could have grabbed a seat and waited, but it seemed insane so I walked around a bit, but again when I got back half an hour before start time the hallway was packed with people lined/mobbed up to get in.

No traffic control at all, hallways were thoroughly blocked.

Half an hour before the opening ceremonies I found a seat, and the room filled rapidly. One of the minions announced that if you were expecting the opening ceremonies, you were in the wrong room, people laughed, I thought she was joking, but no, this was a panel by two physicist sci-fi authors on scientifically ridiculous ideas in books, tv and movies. It should have been a fun panel, but it was meh. And there was no escape, because they laid out the room with the panelists right by the door. Con FAIL is there were only doors on one side of the room, in a double-wide room. And Convention Center FAIL for putting room 103 across the building from 101 but making the signs look like they are together.

So I missed the one event I had on my calendar. :-(

It took a while to find the art show, and longer to find the digital display. My name was listed on the guide but not the photos. And the display was powered up but there was no USB drive plugged in.

By now it is time to look up the tram connections to the Ghost walk tour. It was not hard, take 7B one stop, switch to 7A the opposite direction, then transfer to #4. 7B became 7A after 1 stop, but we had to get off and back on and re-tag. It was a long trip - about an hour. The meetup page said we were looking for a Best Western, but the signage was all local, the hotel is owned by BW, but not branded as them.

It's a former prison, and the hotel has kept it mostly intact. Room doors are solid cell doors with keycard locks. Downstairs past the restaurant is a kept as-is isolation cell.

The tour started out okay, but quickly turned to partial FAIL as the tour guide left me and one other person behind, and we had to hunt to find the other stairs we had missed. There were some interesting stories, but the guide walked too fast, did not stop much to keep us together, and was totally blind to the photographic nature of a tour like this. I took a lot of photos, but would have taken 4x as many if I wasn't stumbling to keep from being completely left behind. An older man on the tour bailed about halfway and grabbed a tram home. I was tempted to join him, but it was the wrong tram for me. We did go by a lot of places which deserve a closer look later.

At the end of the tour we had walked so far that I was only 3 blocks from my hotel!

Instead of going back to my room, I went to the plaza behind the hotel, had dinner at a place called Memphis. Salmon and crawfish with sweet potato fries, Berry iced tea,"mud cake" for dessert. The crawfish was just the claw meat, previously frozen and still cold. The salmon was among the best I ever had. Braised and delicately spiced. Not a fan of sweet potato anything, but these were okay, especially with the cocktail sauce which had been meant for the crawfish. The tea was interesting, the mud cake was not a mud pie, it was a very small square of very chocolate brownie with a very small scoop of vanilla ice cream on top and a sprig of mint. Good, but not as good as a mud pie.

Back to the hotel via the stairs in back instead going around to the front and climbing the hill. Turned out to be longer because the stairs placed me around the corner from the front door. But first, purchased two bottles of Mountain Dew (Coke here tastes off) and a chocolate bar - last night I remembered I have no emergency sugar in the room.

Plans for tomorrow:
Drop off laundry before 9
Breakfast around 9
Take my time getting to the con. Not expecting to get to any panels except the one I'm in
Check to see if the digital art is up in the art show
Meet my co-panelists in the green room around 15:30
Panel 16:00-17:00
Maybe stick around for the parties
Bring laptop & USB cable, copy some photos, Photoshop them and upload to Flickr (free wifi at the con) (?)

Fitful night. Baby sister sent a text to my phone as I was falling asleep, I could swear I read it, she was asking me if I had WhatsAp. But this morning I could not find any text from her. Or email. weird. Might have dreampt it.

Up at 5:30, did my morning stuff minus the shower since I had one last night. 6:45 downstairs to wait for breakfast service at 7, but there was one on the bar, so I grabbed a pair of mini croissants, a few slices of cold cuts and sat down in the lobby. After I finished, they opened the main breakfast serving area. Too late, I needed to find the charter bus stop.

Glad I left early, because what I thought was the stop I found yesterday was not it. I was off by half a block, needed to follow the hotel's suggestion to look for the statue of the soldier on a horse. And to take the first left, not the second. And there was Kevin Standlee escorting wife Lisa whose last name I forget. The bus parked there matched the email, and so did the gathering throng.

One couple was a no-show, we waited 15 minutes then headed out. 3.5 hour drive was 4 hours, including a coffee stop. Lots of freeway, all the roads are in great shape and are being well maintained. I guess this is the time of year to fix them.

Our host talked for the first hour, he is a retiree who spent his life as a journalist, with nuclear power as a specialty. He is a very strong advocate, and he sees 2.5-Mile Island, Chernobyl and Fukushima as taken out of proportion and as lessons learned. He pointed out that France has 60 plants active, no nuclear-related issues. Nothing has gone wrong at this site except a blown pipe away from the reactor building.

At the visitor's center, ID was checked, we were given name badges and a lanyard, and a delicious lunch was served in the dining room. I didn't notice the outdoor patio till later. Chicken soup, salad, chocolate mousse.

Then onto our bus, and a no-photos-allowed tour of the island. The no-photos is a shame, there really is nothing to see which isn't seen better from a satellite, and it's a beautiful natural forest. Parked the bus, and we were escorted by 2 guides and 2 security people through a garage door. Once the door was shut we could take pictures. It was a fascinating walk through bedrock, a fairly steep grade for about 1,000 feet, with stops along the way to have billboards explained by the male guide. The blonde female guide seemed to be there for the ride.

Finally at the bottom of the tunnel is a fancy visitors center, with many exhibits, some of it in a partially dug tunnel branch which was leaking a bit.

Then on to the place the sent fuel goes to rest for 40 years. Nothing to see except the impressive crane and robot truck. We were given radiation meters and when we left the area we each had a machine check for stray contamination.

Then up to the surface in a small elevator, 10 at a time.

Free time to explore the upstairs visitors center and then coffee & bear claws in the dining area.

Trips to the WC, then on the bus back to Helsinki with another coffee stop on the way. That rest area had 5 Tesla chargers and three brand x chargers. Interesting, because our host said there are only 2,000 electrics on the road here. Maybe they are for the Swedish tourists.

I nodded off a lot on the trip home, photo ops were limited because of the glare.

Back to the bus stop at about 8 pm, way too late to check in to the con.

Walked back toward the hotel, heard music behind it so I followed the pedestrian traffic and discovered a major plaza and mall behind my hotel. Way lots of eye candy, too much of it smoking tobacco. I hung around a bit, then went inside ISO dinner. Inside is the bus station for Espoo-bound buses, and lots of places with food, including a Burger King and a Ben & Jerry's. Only $6 for a single scoop.

I found a place called Singapore Wok, but the food was all Malaysian. I had beef kwateo and an orange soda. No diet drinks. Almost as soon as I started eating they closed the glass panels, but didn't pressure us to leave. I left about 1/8 of the meal and most of the soda because the food was so-so and I hate being in a closed restaurant.

Disappointed that the back door/elevator to the hotel, on the plaza side, is employees only. That meant a 2-block walk to the other side, half uphill. There was more eye candy, so not a total bummer.

Up to the room, used the facilities, Facebooked, got undressed, checked tomorrow's route - easy one, just walk halfway across the street and catch the #9 tram. They run every 11 minutes. It's a short walk at the other end to the con check-in.

Plans for tomorrow:
Breakfast
#9 tram to the con
Find my panel rooms & art show
attend the opening ceremony, and whatever caught my eye on the schedule.

It's Monday. Somehow. Monday evening, Finland time.

Sunday was last minute shopping. Best Buy had in stock CF memory, I bought two 32GB ones, they gave me an online discount. Next door REI because I figured they would have a better hat and a better compactable rain-resistant jacket. But they were closed. They don't open till 11 on Sundays. The ultimate morning person store. Boo,hiss. I wasted the time at Starbucks.

They have four walls filled with hats. Most are variations of the classic wide brim sun hat. After I'd found one with a soft brim, I saw what I really wanted, a baseball hat with a soft everything. Scrunchable and when I flip the camera from landscape to portrait the bill of the hat just moves with it. They had jackets, for $200+. So for $20 I bought a bottle of rain resist spray.

Home, watered all the things, final packing including formatting the new CF cards and tossing the SD cards into a drawer.

Janice picked me up a little before 4, and reminded me what I forgot to pack - the Euro coins. Not a big deal, there wasn't even a full set.

We got there in plenty of time. It was nice to be in no rush when Finnair informed me that they don't allow TSA Pre. I ended up standing in line with all the unwashed. So many families with small kids.

The last time I went through TSA they held up my carry on because the metal tablet stand bffled them, so this time I took it out and out it in the tray with my shoes, belt, and cell phone.

Went through the body scanner and got a pat down because it thought it saw metal in my pants leg. Nope. Insane.

So this time they held onto that tray for 20 minutes, as I watch the one inspector take apart all 3,248 items in some little girl's rolling carry-on. Insane.

Finally a guy came along with my tray and figured out what that metal thing was. Insane.

It also meant I had to pull my laptop out of the sleeve in the bottom of the bag. In the process of putting it back, it crunched all the address labels, so if you expected a post card, too bad.

Didn't like any of the places to eat, so I bought a coke & trail mix at the news stand.

The plane was 10 minutes late boarding, but they acted like it was on time. I was one of the last on, but there was still a place for my bag. Full flight, but none of these asshats bringing major luggage as carry-on.

After we were underway a stewardess helped me plug my headphones into the seat jack - by the end of the flight it wasn't working, and I was using BT on the tablet. The noise canceling worked amazingly well, my seat was right over the engines, very noisy. Sadly, the only frequency which cut through the noise canceling was children crying, whining or screaming. It was far away, but annoying.

The food was good, but they were on a San Francisco schedule all the way. Breakfast as we were 90 minutes from landing - late afternoon Helsinki time.

I slept for maybe 5 minutes. Why is it I can fall asleep sitting up at work, but not on a plane?

We were late landing, I think close to an hour, but I was on no hurry. Good thing, because they landed us way far from the terminal, we had to walk down stairways and load onto buses. Instead of off-loading us at the international arrivals area, they let us off all the way on the other end of the airport. long long walk. Very short wait to get the passport stamped, the usual 3 questions, and then another long walk to baggage claim. My bag was already on the carousel, not surprise - it got dropped off closer than I had. And no customs inspection or card to fill out.

Having no idea how to get to my hotel, I took a taxi, and I suspect he took a very indirect route. About 9 euros more than expected. Turns out the #9 tram stops in front and the airport flyer bus is two blocks away.

The hotel is nice, check-in was easy. I'm on the 7th (out of 8) floor, with a view of an old brick building which appears to be partially under renovation.

The room is big enough, plenty of outlets, good thing I have plenty of adapters.

Took the short walk to the bus station, were I will need to be tomorrow at 8 am. Took lots of photos after setting the time to local. GPS took a while, which is expected when starting up halfway across the world.

It's 9 pm now, I am going to bed as soon as I finish this and some Facebooking.
Plans for tomorrow:
8 am - all day trip 3.5 hours each way to a nuke power plant,lunch included
Find a place to have dinner near the hotel

Not fiing typos.

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howard stateman

Howeird's Place

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Back the same day - barely
Epic bad end to the day
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Not an auspicious opening day
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Writing Wrongs

Annoying The Neighbors Since 1950

Entries tagged with #9

Masters of Toast

First Sunday

Back the same day - barely

Epic bad end to the day

Saturday

Coming on Midnight in Helsinki, 2 pm in Sunnyvale

Not an auspicious opening day

A Longer Day

Too Popped To Poop